Our next annual Space Access
Conference, April 11-13 at
the InnPlace Hotel Phoenix North, 10220 North Metro Parkway
East in Phoenix
Arizona, is the place to be
for the latest on the technology, business, politics, and
opportunities of Radically Cheaper Access To Space. We
feature a cross-section of the growing cheap access community,
talking about what's going on now and what we should be doing next,
in a fast-paced informal atmosphere. This conference is
well-reported, but it is not broadcast on the Web - if you want to be
in the middle of these intensive discussions in this exciting time,
you need to be there!

Two daystill
the conference. Affordable airfares into Arizona for our sunny spring
desert weekend are going away fast - book those flights now!And you can still get our
$74-with-breakfast-and-internet discount hotel room rate, but only as
long as they have rooms left. Book
that room!Advance
conference registration is now closed - you'll have to
register when you get there. At-door registration is $140 full
conference ($40 student rate),
and day rates for Thursday/Friday/Saturday are
$60/$60/$40 ($20/$20/$20 student rate).

This is pretty close to our final Space
Access 2013 presentations schedule. Speakers, let us know ASAP when
you'll be arriving onsite and when departing, if we've scheduled you
outside that window! Today's update adds Michael Laine as the
speaker for LiftPort. Any
further changes will be announced at the conference and posted by
Registration.

5:40 -
Ben Brockert, Able Space -
alumnus of Masten Space and Armadillo has a new company

6 pm - break
for dinner

8 pm -
Panel Discussion: Planetary Defense - We
live in a cosmic shooting gallery. What can we do to detect and
deflect inbound objects with what we've got now? How can we
affordably improve those capabilities soon? George Herbert, John
Schilling, Henry Spencer, Henry Vanderbilt

We at
Space Access Society have always viewed the Space
Studies Institute's mission as complementary to ours. We work
on affordable transportation to the new frontier, while they work on
how we'll survive (and thrive) there. It gives us considerable
pleasure that this year's Space Access Conference is hosting our
colleagues for a half-day session:

9:20
- Al Globus, San Jose State University at NASA Ames - Paths To Space
Settlement

Building
a space settlement today is far too expensive a proposition. The
technology and infrastructure is not sufficient. However, there
are at least three potential paths to space settlement that could
change this: space tourism, space solar power, and planetary defense.
If vigorously pursued, these paths would, together,
develop most of the technology and infrastructure -- particularly
launch -- necessary to build the first space settlement at reasonable
cost. Note that each of these activities makes sense in and of
itself, the first two may generate substantial profits and the last
is a primary function of government.

The
National Space Policy statement of June 2010 quotes the president as
saying that: "Our goal is the capacity for people to work and
learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended
periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and
even indefinite." This talk will discuss some implications
of that goal.

A
robust closed environment life support system is a prerequisite for
human settlement off the Earth. Previous attempts to develop such a
system have, at best, been minimally successful. As in all engineered
systems, an appropriate high level design is critical to commercial
success. High level requirements are listed and an engineering road
map is described to decide between alternative solutions to satisfy
therequirements.

10:30
- midmorning break, coffee in the conference hall lobby

11:00
- James Bennett, co-founder AMROC - The Quest For Unobtainium: New
Perspectives On The Economics Of Colonization, And Their Implications
For Space Settlement Strategies

Thinking
among American space settlement advocates has always been heavily
influenced by assumptions derived by analogy from the experience of
colonization and settlement of the US. Certain assumptions have been
accepted as settled conclusions. Among these are the
assumption that successful colonization requires the identification
of unique high-value export products that can be produced in the
colonization target and exported profitably to the mother country at
the earliest possible opportunity, and that the process of
colonization is controlled by the capital interests (either private
or public) seeking to acquire such products. Recent research in
the historical economics of colonization, including studies of the
US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa (Belich, Hansen,
Hugill, Mein Smith) in the period 1850-1930, suggests that
these assumptions are far less typical than previously assumed, and
that settlement particularly in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries was, rather, driven largely by individual and family
initiative, and largely self-financed by the settlers themselves,
using saved and borrowed capital. Agricultural and manufactured
production was typically not exported back to the metropolis, but
initially consumed in the colony itself, and later exported primarily
further out to the frontier from regions just behind the current
frontier of settlement. Significant export to the metropolis
usually did not begin until fifty years or more from initial
settlement. Although some aspects of off-planet colonization
will likely differ due to the extreme differences in environment, it
is likely that some, and perhaps the larger part, of significant
space settlement will follow these patterns. This in turn
suggests that in-situ resource utilization, including manufacture,
will be relatively more important than obtaining resources for export
back to Earth, and that individual consumer preference, including
non-economic factors may be a larger determinant of initial
settlement destinations than export value of resources. Although
the bulk of space settlement discussions have tended to accept the
standard assumptions, the conclusions supported by recent research
are consistent with the speculations offered by Dyson (1988).

11:20
- David Valentine, University of Minnesota - Stories As Technologies

What
is significant about the stories we tell about the future of space
settlement? NewSpace advocates tell many stories about
space, exploration, human nature, and the future . but so do
many other people, whose stories might be quite different.
Taking an anthropological perspective, Valentine will argue
that such stories.told both by NewSpace advocates and by others.are
technologies that are as important to attend to as rocket or
life support technologies if space settlement is to be achieved.

Space
Access Hospitality in 156 open till midnight. There will also be a
Yuri's
Night Party Friday
night, co-sponsored by a number of groups including the Phoenix
chapters of AIAA,
NSS,
and Moon
Society.

Saturday April 13th

8 am -
Hospitality Opens, coffee in the conference hall lobby

9 am - Panel
Discussion: World Space Programs & Projects. The US is far
from the only player. What's going on in the rest of the world? Clark
Lindsey, Doug Messier

6:10 -
end of Saturday program - break for dinner and talk-fest partying!
Space Access Hospitality in 156 open till late. (We
hear there may also be a volunteer effort afoot for a return of the
traditional Saturday Night Rocket Margharitas!)

SA'13 conference registration is $120 until midnight west
coast time Wednesday April 3rd (after which
preregistration closes), $140 at the door after that, Student Rate
$40 either way. (Day rates will be available at the door.) Click on
this
link for SA'13 advance registration with credit card or
Paypal. You can also mail in your registration with a check or money
order - include your name, the affiliation (if any) you want listed
on your badge, and your email address, make the check out to "Space
Access '13", and mail it to Space Access '13, PO Box 16034,
Phoenix AZ 85011. (Mail-in preregistrations must also be received by
Wednesday April 3rd.)

Conference Hotel &
Reservations

SA'13 will take place at the InnPlace Hotel Phoenix North,
10220 North Metro Parkway East, Phoenix AZ 85051, by the Metrocenter
Mall in north central Phoenix, fourteen freeway miles from the
Phoenix airport. Our SA'13 conference room rates are $74 a night
single or double, third or fourth person $10 additional each, $104 a
night for suites, full American breakfast buffet and in-room wireless
internet included in room rates.

Click onthis
link for InnPlace reservations at our conference rate, or
call the InnPlace at (602) 997-5900 and mention "SA13".
(Our rates are good for up to three days before and after the
conference, if you're thinking of soaking up a little extra
springtime Arizona sunshine.) The InnPlace is a modern comfortable
resort-style hotel with a fine restaurant and bar, a half-dozen other
dining options less than a block away, and a wide variety of shopping
within a few minutes walk. We're very pleased to be at the InnPlace
this year, helping continue Space Access's long tradition of being
both the best, and the best value in, new-space transportation
conferences.

Conference Background

SA'13 is the next round of Space Access Society's yearly event for
people seriously interested in the business, technology, and politics
of radically cheaper space transportation. The conference is
intensive and informal - single program track, tightly scheduled
sessions, no requirement for a prepared paper, speaking off-the-cuff
is fine. The idea is to get a snapshot of where things are and where
they're headed next, not where they were six months ago.

We think that networking is a better use of your conference time
than canned dinner speeches. We skip the traditional rubber-chicken
banquets, schedule comfortable on-your-own meal breaks, and make sure
there are multiple good places nearby to grab a bite and talk with
other attendees. We also run an open Hospitality Suite
(InnPlace room 156 this year) for the duration of the conference as a
place to get together, grab a snack, and talk.

Conference attendees range from students and amateur rocket
enthusiasts, through cheap-access political activists and startup
rocket companies, to government and established aerospace company
people. To a considerable extent over the years, our conference has
been (by design) an incubator for the "newspace"
entrepreneurial end of things.

We understand that much of our target audience isn't rich - yet.
We work hard to keep overall conference attendance costs low. Phoenix
is a major air hub, we schedule the conference so you can travel at
off-peak parts of the week despite it still being warm-weather
winter-tourist season here, and we negotiate hard to get good room
rates at a pleasant and well-kept conference hotel.

Bottom line, it's been a useful conference over the twenty years
we've been doing it - companies have been started, investments made,
policies evolved, ideas spread, people hired. Pretty much what we've
aimed for.